Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1910 — OLDEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD [ARTICLE]

OLDEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD

Bulgarian Peasant's Daughter Bays She ia 126 Years Old—Worked In Fields. Berlin.—The claim of Frau Dutkiewita of Posen, born on February 21. 1785, to be the oldest woman in the world Is now contested by Mme. Baba Vasilka, who was born In May, 1784, In the little Bulgarian village of Bavelako, where she has lived ever ■since. The record of her birth Is preserved in a neighboring monastery of the orthodox Greek faith. She is the daughter of a peasant and has worked herself as a peasant up till a comparatively recent date. For more than 100 years she regularly worked In the fields, according to the custom of her country, where women are employed in all sorts of manual labor. The events of her life up to the ttm« when she attained the age of eighty are far more distinctly Impressed on her mine than the happenings of the last forty-six years. Her son Todor, following the family tradition, has also worked In the fields as a peasant nearly all his life, but he has also taken part In various wars and rebellions in the RalVnp peninsula. He is not quite as fresh and vigorous as his mother, although he Is still capable of doing a good day’s work, and enjoying such ema*. luxuries of life as a pipe and the strong spirits drunk by the Bulgarian populace. The oldest woman in the world Is said to enjoy fairly good eyesight good hearing, and she is able to walk f without support She lives on a pension paid to her by many of her descendants, who number mare than one hundred.